The Salt and the Flame

April 21, 1923. The SS Metagama is inching out of Stornoway harbor, Scotland. On board are Finlay and Mairead, young and hopeful, destined for Detroit.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the effects of the Great Depression are inescapable. Prejudice and division are rife, and though they remain bound by a shared past, their lives soon diverge.
In an adopted country that is tense with both opportunity and loss, can Mairead and Finlay keep their promises to one another to look only forward, and resist the constant pull of home?
From the author of the prize-winning As the Women Lay Dreaming comes a poignant and deeply evocative novel of the 20th-century emigrant experience in the New World. With lyrical prose and masterful storytelling, Murray paints a vivid portrait of the resilient Hebrideans-in-exile who struggled between holding on and letting go.

About the author

Writer and poet Donald S Murray is an Honorary Fellow of the Association for Scottish Literature who has won the Society of Authors’ Paul Torday Memorial Prize (2012, for As the Women Lay Dreaming) and the Callum Macdonald Memorial Award (2021), among many awards for his historical fiction, creative non-fiction and poems. His critically acclaimed books bring to life the culture and nature of the Scottish islands, and he appears regularly on BBC Radio 4 and BBC Radio Scotland and as a live performer.

Product details

• Authors: Donald S Murray, Donald S. Murray
• Publisher: The School of Life Press
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 14.05.2024
• EAN: 9781915089892
• ISBN: 978-1-915089-89-2
• Dimensions: 130 mm x 200 mm x 19 mm
• Series: Donald S Murray's Lewis Collection
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Historical fiction, FICTION / Literary, Second World War fiction, FICTION / Cultural Heritage, FICTION / Family Life / Marriage & Divorce, Narrative theme: Social issues, Narrative theme: Death, grief, loss, Narrative theme: displacement, exile, migration, Narrative theme: Identity / belonging, First World War fiction, Narrative theme: Journeys and voyages